Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics
The world witnessed the severe humanitarian and economic repercussions of pandemic pathogens during COVID-19 crisis, and we remain dangerously unprepared for future pandemics.
With the rate of zoonotic pathogen spread increasing and rapid technological advances in synthetic biology and AI, there exists the possibility of far deadlier pandemics, but also new opportunities to defend against them.
This podcast is from the Biosecurity Fundamentals: Pandemics course, which covers technical and policy efforts to prevent, detect and respond to catastrophic pandemics.
Episodes
32 episodes
Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments
The US State Department report is released each April and provides an assessment of states' adherence to arms control, non-proliferation and disarmament agreements and commitments. We see this as a useful resource giving some evidence of modern...
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17:26
The Biological Weapons Convention: An Introduction
This resource provides an overview of the Biological Weapons Convention, a disarmament treaty that bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Despite 187 states being party to the treaty,...
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16:28
A Framework for Technical Progress on Biosecurity
In this post, Kyle Fish presents five key goals for biosecurity technologies: to be fast, general, cheap, robust, and scalable. These will be useful heuristics for us to apply as we consider a range of interventions over the next three weeks. K...
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18:41
Differential Technology Development: An Innovation Governance Consideration for Navigating Technology Risks
This paper introduces a framing of "differential technology development" – affecting the relative timing of new innovations to reduce a specific risk. For instance, it may be beneficial to delay or halt risk-increasing technologies and preferen...
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16:26
ESM3: Simulating 500 Million Years of Evolution with a Language Model
ESM3 is an AI model which is trained on protein sequence, structure and function data. This allows it to follow prompts to design novel proteins. When reading, consider the ways in which this model might present opportunities and risks for pand...
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21:34
Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Agents: A Crucial Pandemic Tool
Original text: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7103698/ Author(s): Amesh Adalja and Thomas Inglesby
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16:52
The New Bioweapons: How Synthetic Biology Could Destabilize the World
Original text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19dxfYiUnrK4fR5EJW3Nb2zkpgvsEC28y/view?usp=sharing Author(s): Roger Brent, T. ...
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25:54
What Were the Death Tolls from Pandemics in History?
This resource from 'Our World in Data' estimates the death tolls from the most devastating pandemics in history, with a particular focus on the 19th century onwards.Original text:
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30:54
Towards a Theory of Pandemic-Proof PPE
"Vital workers must be protected against viral threats so that critical functions of society can continue during a global pandemic. Globally, COVID-19 revealed weaknesses in the PPE enterprise including production and distribution limitations, ...
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Season 6
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Episode 6
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23:14
Indoor Air Quality Is the Next Great Public Health Challenge
"Cleaner indoor air can increase productivity, improve student outcomes, and prevent pandemics."Original text: https://ifp.org/indoor-air-quality/ Author(s): Juan C...
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Season 6
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Episode 4
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37:27
From Warp Speed to 100 Days
"During the COVID pandemic, we learned to design vaccines within weeks. Now, the bottleneck is testing that they work. To get even faster, we need innovations in clinical trial design."Original text:
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Season 6
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Episode 3
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22:33
COVID-19: Examining the Effectiveness of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions
Original text:
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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40:39
The Worst Covid Strategy Was Not Picking One
Original text: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-lessons-learned-from-covid-pandemic-global-comparison/
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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31:55
We Aren't Prepared for the Next Pandemic
It will probably start with a cluster of unusual symptoms. Some of the people with the disease will know each other, but won’t have been exposed to animals, suggesting the infection can spread between people. Then more cases will start appearin...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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19:36
Emerging COVID-19 Success Story: Vietnam's Commitment to Containment
Despite sharing a land border with China, Vietnam mounted one of the strongest early responses to COVID-19, reporting only 35 deaths by December 31, 2020, compared to 90,000 in the UK. This article highlights Vietnam's swift and proactive actio...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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35:09
Nowcasting Epidemics of Novel Pathogens: Lessons from COVID-19
This paper discusses critical questions for gaining early situational awareness in an outbreak, using COVID-19 as an example. It highlights key queries about the pathogen, transmission modes, population vulnerability, and available medical coun...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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37:19
Toward a Global Pathogen Early Warning System
This report covers the current landscape in pathogen early warning and biosurveillance, highlights challenges and identifies opportunities from emerging technologies. You will have the opportunity to dig deeper into some of the new technologies...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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37:02
Common Terminology in Infectious Disease Epidemiology
This resource provides a brief introduction to some of the most common terms used in infectious disease epidemiology.Original text:
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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10:47
Preventing the Misuse of DNA Synthesis
DNA synthesis represents the primary interface between the digital and physical worlds when it comes to synthetic biology - the point at which potentially hazardous information could become an actually dangerous piece of biological material. No...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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9:02
Biological Weapons Convention
This Wikipedia article provides an overview of the Biological Weapons Convention, a disarmament treaty that bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Despite 185 states being party to th...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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9:31
Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic Pathogens
This page gives a brief overview of the NIH's framework for guiding funding decisions on potentially risky research involving enhanced potential pandemic pathogens (ePPPs). Following the release of a report, 'Proposed Biosecurity Oversight Fram...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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7:04
Addressing the Gap in International Norms for Biosafety
The document highlights the need for national-level norms for biosafety, given that a laboratory accident with contagious pathogens could have global implications. Despite guidance for local and institutional biosafety practices, there are few ...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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9:53
Want to Prevent Pandemics? Stop Spillovers
This article proposes four key actions that can be taken to prevent outbreaks from zoonotic spillover: protecting tropical forests, regulating or banning live wildlife markets, improving biosecurity for farmed animals, and improving health and ...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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6:07
The Danger of ‘Invisible’ Biolabs Across the U.S.
As synthetic biology techniques develop and the barriers to entry become lower, we are increasingly seeing the development of privately-operated biological labs. These often enforce less stringent safety standards than those in academia, and ca...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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8:10
Pandemic Prevention as Fire-Fighting
This article introduces a range of strategies to reduce pandemic risk whilst drawing parallels to fire-fighting interventions. It argues that pandemic prevention, like fire-fighting, needs a comprehensive approach that includes prevention, earl...
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Season 1
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Episode 2
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37:28